We've jumped 12 centuries to the 1300s this week. Dante Alighieri was a Florentine (b. 1265, died in exile in Ravenna in 1321). We are only reading the 1st volume of his Divine Comedy. I'll have to put Volume 2 (Purgatory) and Volume 3 (Paradise) on to my ever-expanding reading list for when the course year is over. After reading the Inferno, I feel as if I really need to know who makes it to the next levels!
This was an interesting book for me. We went to church when I was growing up but the imagery and the elaborate structure of Hell described in this book is not anything I was ever exposed to before. It was intriguing to think that Dante based much of his structure on Virgil's Aeneid. As the Inferno shows, Virgil was not a Christian and so he is relegated to Hell and not able to aspire to Purgatory or Paradise.
I found the imagery in this poem to be stunning. Much of it was horrifying and I can't imagine what it would have been like to live believing that these torments are actually what you would be suffering after death. I was hooked right from the beginning of this book, with the opening line (Canto I, 1-3):
Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
Even his description of Virgil has so much packed into 3 lines (Canto I, 60-63):
While I was rushing down to that low place,
my eyes made out a figure coming towards me
of one grown faint, perhaps from too much silence.
Some of the content was familiar to me, such as the famous (though I didn't realize or remember that it came from Dante) warning (Canto II, 9):
ABANDON EVERY HOPE, ALL YOU WHO ENTER
But much of the imagery was new to me: rivers of boiling blood, the geryon, the various torments.
The intricate structure of the Inferno was amazing and confusing. Now I'll have to read Virgil and Aristotle to see where some or much of this may have come from. The 9 circles of Hell (+ the outer vestibule for worthy un-baptised and non-Christians) and all of the fine gradations within: the three rings in the 7th circle, the 10 malabolgias (bad ditches) in the 8th circle, the Upper and Lower parts of Hell, the City of Dis, the various rivers and marshes, the physical structures (bridges, towers, castles, abysses, burning sands, gates and barriers), and the various monsters (Minos, Cerburus, Plutus, Furies, Erinyes, harpies, Gorgons, Minotaur, Centaurs, black devils, black cherubim, giants and then the giant Lucifer stuck upside down at the very bottom of Hell.
It was also quite interesting to see how Dante ordered the various types of sinners. He makes a difference between the sins of the intellect and sins of action. The Inferno was divided into Upper and Lower Hell with Upper Hell being for sins of Incontinence (essentially lack of control), which he calls the Sins of the Wolf; and Lower Hell being for sins that are deliberately done - the Sins of the Lion. The division is at the City of Dis. Heretics are separate, being based on intellectual pride. The Heretics are within the Gates of Dis, and so placed between the sins of Incontinence and those of Malice. In Outer Hell are the Lustful and the Gluttonous outermost, the hoarders and the spendthrifts, then the wrathful, the Heretics, the Violent (least sinful were those violent against their neighbours, then those against themselves - the Suicides - then most sinful were those violent against God and nature. He includes Fraud as being very sinful, putting it lower (more serious) than Violence, down the abyss to the 10 stone ravines in the 8th circle of Hell containing the Sins of the Leopard (from least sinful to most sinful):
- panderers and seducers
- simonists (churchmen who took money for religious acts)
- sorcerers
- barrators (secular simonists, grafters, sellers of public office)
- hypocrites
- thieves
- deceivers
- sowers of discord
- falsifiers
Then the giants.
It was strange to have those who committed violence considered less sinful than the hypocrites and thieves or deceivers; those committing suicide more sinful than those who killed their neighbours. He also puts the Profligates in with the Suicides in the Wood of the Suicides, because they violently waste what they have.
There was certainly much passion in the Inferno, with many of the sinners those who had let themselves be governed by passion. Some obvious cases like Francesca da Rimini and Paolo (Canto V) in the 2nd circle of hell who gave in to their love for one another and betrayed family (her husband who was his brother). Dante writes about "those who make reason slave to appetite" (V.39), probably as neat a summary of the usual conflict between reason and passion as anyone could write.
It also contains a line I've heard before that contains so much in what it doesn't say. Francesca is speaking to Dante about how she and Paolo came to give in to their lust while reading about Lancelot (from a french text Lancelot du Lac),
"That day we read no further." (V.138)
Regarding passion again, Dante writes, as the Pilgrim visits the 3rd circle of hell (Gluttony), in canto VI, "...for pride, envy, avarice are the three sparks
that kindle men's hearts and set them burning."
Virgil tells Dante (The Pilgrim):
"...Remember your philosophy:
the closer a thing comes to its perfection,
more keen will be its pleasure or its pain." (VI, 106-108)
In the 6th circle (Heretics), in canto XI, Virgil instructs the Pilgrim on philosophy:
Philosophy...points out to one who reads with understanding
how Nature takes her course form the Divine.
[...]
From Art and Nature man was meant to take
his daily bread to live - if you recall
the book of Genesis near the beginning;
(XI, 97-108)
At the edge of the Wood of the Suicides they come to the Burning Sands and a river of boiling blood (the Phlegethon) and Virgil tells the Pilgrim about the Old Man of Crete whose tears are the source of all the rivers in Hell (Acheron, Styx, Phlegethon which all eventually collect to form the pool Cocytus at the bottom of the Inferno.)
Several Cantos deal with their travels in the 8th circle of Hell, over the 10 malabolgias (bad ditches, a series of stone ravines traversed by stone bridges). In the 5th bolgia (for Barrators) Dante writes (XXI.42) "You can change a 'no' to 'yes' for cash in Lucca". Again such a succinct way to say so much - though when we were in Italy in 2007 Lucca was a favourite city to visit and I had no idea of its medieval reputation for barratry. Dante considered barratry as secular simonry. It later acquired other meanings including the vexatious stirring up of quarrels or bringing of lawsuits; or the offense of persistently instigating lawsuits, typically groundless ones.
In the 7th bolgia ((Thieves, whose torment is applied by serpents) Dante talks about fame, something we've discussed in class with other texts. When you start to consider the meaning of life, what a good life is, what is the purpose of it all, there have been many discussions about how whatever one does in one's live it is unlikely to last for very long. Any descendants you have won't remember much about you after a couple of generations. If you leave a work of art (painting, writing, pottery etc) it may or may not last very long, if it does last for centuries or millenia, those coming after may not know much about you (such as Sappho or even Lucretius) so what does it mean. Virgil tells Dante :
Come on, shake off the covers of this sloth,
the master said, for sitting softly cushioned,
or tucked into bed is no way to win fame;
and without it man must waste his life away,
leaving such traces of what he was on earth
as smoke in wind and foam upon the water.
(XXIV, 46-50)
In canto XXIV Dante enumerates many exotic reptiles from the sands of Libya (which interestingly in some background reading for my essay I read was considered by some to be the location of the Elysian Fields or the Isles of the Blest): chelydri (which leave smoking paths), jaculi (which dart in the air and pierce), phareans (which makes paths with their tails), cenchres (which leave a wavering course in the sands) and head-tailed amphisbenes (2 heads, one at each end).
Again it's always nice to see a reference to something we've read this term and have more understanding of the reference now.
In Canto X (X.14-15), Dante writes:
...Epicurus and his followers
who make the soul die when the body dies.
The sheer number of references to legendary and historical figures and events, to places, to myths was staggering and again, I want to read so much more about them.
All the mythological figures (too many to list), Dolcino and Margaret of Trent, Caesar hesitating to cross the Rubicon (which I always thought was a Napoleonic reference and probably was used for him referring back to Caesar), Bertran de Born a Provencal troubadour in the 1100s who caused the rebellion of Prince Henry against his father Henry II of England, Nimrod building the Tower of Babel, Mordred (wicked nephew of King Arthur), Ganelon who betrayed Roland to the Saracens (making me remember Arezzo and their annual jousts which we saw in June where men on horseback from various factions in the city tilt against the wooden figure of a Saracen holding a shield and 3 wooden balls), Tolomen (Ptolemy), Caiaphas who advised Pontius Pilate, Michael Scot (a scottish soothsayer at Frederick II's court at Palermo), the Donation of Constantine, Cato and Pompey and the Caesars, Camilla, Penthesilea (Queen of Amazons), Semiramis (Queen of Assyria), Dido (Queen of Carthage), Tristan (sent by his uncle King Mark of Cornwall, to obtain Isolt).
So many stories and historical events that I'm dying to read more about. This book was so rich. It makes a strong case for not letting your passions overthrow your reason. Our other text this week is Rumi's poetry - incredibly different. Lots of passion but in a more transcendent way.
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